Devin vs Cursor
One takes the ticket and opens a pull request. The other sits in your editor and waits for the next instruction. Everything else — price, models, lock-in — follows from that.
Updated September 12, 2026 · Independent comparison — Devin, Cursor are separate products.
Devin
Cognition's autonomous cloud engineer
Devin is Cognition's autonomous cloud engineer: you hand it a ticket and review a pull request, rather than steering edit by edit. It reaches you through Devin Web, Devin Desktop — which is the product formerly called Windsurf, renamed in June 2026 — and Devin CLI, with Slack, Linear, Jira and GitHub integrations on higher plans. The ladder is Free, Pro at $20, Max at $200, and Teams from $80/month plus $40 per developer seat, metered as daily and weekly usage allowances rather than credits, with overage consumed at API pricing. Concurrency is the tier that actually separates the plans: up to ten concurrent sessions on Free and Pro, unlimited on Max and Teams. Cognition also builds its own model — SWE-2, released September 10, 2026 and post-trained from Kimi K3 — and it is free in Devin Desktop and the CLI through October 10, 2026.
Cursor
The AI editor you drive yourself
Cursor is an AI-first editor you drive, with the same agent available as a CLI (cursor-agent), on the web, on mobile and through an SDK. Plans run Hobby (free), Pro at $20, Pro+ at $60 and Ultra at $200, with Teams at $40 per user and a Premium seat at $120. Usage splits into two pools: Cursor Models — its own Composer 2.5 plus Grok 4.6 and 4.5, which Cursor describes as jointly trained with SpaceXAI — and Other Models, where Claude, GPT, Gemini and Kimi are metered at API list rates. Cursor never hard-stops at the ceiling; it offers on-demand usage billed in arrears. Like Cognition it ships an in-house model, and by the same route: Composer 2.5 is Cursor-trained on Moonshot's Kimi K2.5, priced at $0.50 in and $2.50 out per million tokens.
Bottom line
These are not competing versions of the same tool. Devin is a delegation product — you write the ticket, it works in Cognition's cloud, you review the pull request — and its plans are shaped around how many of those can run at once: ten concurrent sessions on the $20 Pro tier, unlimited on Max and Teams. Cursor is a driving product: an editor where you read every diff, with the same agent available as a CLI, on the web and on iOS, metered per prompt across two credit pools that never hard-stop but bill on-demand overage in arrears. Both now ship an in-house model post-trained from a Moonshot base — SWE-2 from Kimi K3, Composer 2.5 from K2.5 — and neither will let you use it anywhere else. If you want work to happen while you are not watching, Devin is the product built for it. If you want to be watching, Cursor is, and its model catalogue is far wider.
What you are actually buying
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Interaction model | Delegate a ticket, review a pull request | Drive an editor, approve edits as they happen |
| Where the work runs | Cognition's cloud, plus a desktop app and CLI | Your machine, plus cloud background agents |
| Primary surface | Devin Web | The Cursor editor |
| Other surfaces | Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf), Devin CLI | Cursor CLI, web, iOS, SDK |
| Ticket-to-PR automation | ✓ | Background agents; you still drive the main loop |
| Issue-tracker integrations | Slack, Linear, Jira and GitHub on higher plans | GitHub; Slack via background agents |
Pricing
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — small daily and weekly quota | Yes — Hobby, with limited agent requests and Tab |
| Entry paid plan | $20/mo (Pro) | $20/mo (Pro) |
| Higher tiers | Max $200/mo | Pro+ $60/mo, Ultra $200/mo |
| Team pricing | $80/mo base plus $40 per developer seat | Standard $40/user/mo; Premium seat $120/user/mo |
| Billing shape | Daily and weekly usage allowances | Two credit pools metered per prompt |
| Behaviour at the ceiling | Overage consumed at API pricing | Never hard-stops — on-demand usage billed in arrears |
| Annual discount | Not published | Roughly 20% — Pro about $16/mo |
| Enterprise | Quote — SSO, audit logs, SOC 2, US/EU data residency | Custom, plus a $0.25/M token rate on third-party models |
Models
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| In-house model | SWE-2, post-trained from Kimi K3 (2.8T) | Composer 2.5, trained on Kimi K2.5 |
| In-house model price | No public per-token rate — bundled into the plan | $0.50 in / $2.50 out per 1M; Fast $3 / $15 |
| Frontier models available | Yes, alongside SWE-2 | Claude, GPT, Gemini and Kimi in the Other Models pool |
| Third-party models metered separately | Not published as separate pools | Yes — API list rates from the smaller pool |
| Switch models mid-session | Model picker in the CLI and Desktop | ✓ |
| Bring your own API key | ✗ | ✗ |
| Notable model partnership | Kimi K3 base, via Moonshot | Grok 4.6 and 4.5, jointly trained with SpaceXAI |
| Multi-model orchestration | Fusion — a lead model with SWE-2 as sidekick | Auto/Router picks a model per request |
Concurrency & scale
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Concurrent sessions | Up to 10 on Free and Pro; unlimited on Max and Teams | Background agents; limited by your credit pools, not a session cap |
| Parallel work isolation | Each session gets its own cloud workspace | Background agents run on Cursor's cloud against a branch |
| Headless / CI use | Devin API on paid tiers | agent -p for scripts and CI |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
Lock-in & portability
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| In-house model usable elsewhere | No — SWE-2 has no public API | No — Composer 2.5 is Cursor-only |
| Drives a third-party agent | No — Devin-locked | No — Cursor account required |
| Editor you keep | Devin Desktop, or none — it is a cloud product | Cursor's VS Code fork; extensions mostly port |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Platforms | Web, macOS, Windows, Linux | macOS, Windows, Linux |
Verdict at a glance
| Feature | Devin | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Handing off whole tickets and reviewing the result | Staying in the loop on code you are writing now |
| Entry price | $20/mo, free tier available | $20/mo, free tier available |
| Cheapest path to a strong in-house model | Free in Desktop and CLI through October 10, 2026 | Composer 2.5 included in the Cursor Models pool on every paid plan |
The Verdict
Choose Devin if...
- ✓The unit of work you want to hand over is a ticket, not a function
- ✓Concurrency is the point — ten sessions on Pro, unlimited on Max and Teams
- ✓You want Slack, Linear, Jira and GitHub wired into the agent on higher plans
- ✓You want SWE-2, and free access in Devin Desktop and the CLI through October 10, 2026
- ✓Reviewing pull requests suits your team better than supervising an editor
- ✓Daily and weekly allowances are easier to reason about than per-prompt credits
Choose Cursor if...
- ✓You want to stay in the loop — reading diffs as they happen, not after
- ✓You want one account covering an editor, a CLI, background agents, web and iOS
- ✓Model choice matters: Composer 2.5, Grok 4.6, Claude, GPT, Gemini and Kimi in one place
- ✓You would rather pay on-demand overage than be throttled at a ceiling
- ✓Composer 2.5 at $0.50/$2.50 per million tokens is the cheap workhorse you want
- ✓Annual billing and a roughly 20% discount fit how you buy
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Devin a replacement for Cursor?
Not really — they sit at different points in the loop. Devin takes a ticket and returns a pull request, running in Cognition's cloud with up to ten concurrent sessions on Pro and unlimited on Max and Teams. Cursor is an editor you work inside, reviewing diffs as the agent proposes them. Teams that use both tend to delegate well-specified tickets to Devin and keep exploratory or architectural work in Cursor.
What happened to Windsurf?
It was renamed Devin Desktop in June 2026 after Cognition acquired it, so it is now the desktop surface of the Devin product rather than a separate IDE. Comparisons that still treat Windsurf as an independent Cursor competitor are out of date — the relevant comparison today is Devin versus Cursor, and Windsurf's pricing has moved onto Cognition's Free/Pro/Max/Teams ladder.
Do both companies make their own model?
Yes, and by a strikingly similar route — both post-trained from a Moonshot Kimi base. Cognition's SWE-2, released September 10, 2026, comes from Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter mixture-of-experts. Cursor's Composer 2.5 is trained on Kimi K2.5 and priced at $0.50 in and $2.50 out per million tokens. Neither model is available outside its own product.
Which is cheaper?
They start at the same $20, so it depends on shape rather than sticker. Devin meters daily and weekly usage allowances and charges overage at API pricing; Cursor meters every prompt against two credit pools, does not roll unused credit over, and past the ceiling bills on-demand usage in arrears rather than stopping. Cursor also discounts annual billing by roughly 20%, bringing Pro to about $16/month, which Devin does not publish. For teams the structures diverge further: Devin is $80/month plus $40 per developer seat, while Cursor is $40 per user with an optional $120 Premium seat.
Can I use SWE-2 in Cursor, or Composer 2.5 in Devin?
Neither. SWE-2 has no public API and ships only in Devin Desktop, Devin CLI and — as it rolls out — Devin Web and Fusion. Composer 2.5 is Cursor-only, across its editor, CLI, web, mobile and SDK. The one model both products can reach is Grok 4.6, which Cursor carries as a first-party jointly-trained model and which is also available through the xAI API.
Which one runs more work in parallel?
Devin, and it is explicit about it — up to ten concurrent sessions on Free and Pro, unlimited on Max and Teams, each in its own cloud workspace. Cursor has no published session cap; its background agents are limited by how fast you burn your credit pools instead. If running many independent tasks at once is the reason you are buying, Devin's tiers are built around that number and Cursor's are not.
1DevToolDelegate and drive, without picking a vendor
Devin and Cursor are two answers to the same question, and both of them end with you locked into one company's harness and one company's in-house model. 1DevTool takes the other route: it runs Devin CLI, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Grok, Cline and eleven more agents side by side in persistent tmux-backed terminals, each on the subscription it is actually licensed for, with automatic fallback when one hits a limit. Charts and teams let you fan whole tickets out across several of them at once — delegation without the single-vendor cloud. Around it sits a 23-engine database client, an HTTP client and an embedded browser, all wired into Send-to-AI. From $29 one-time, no subscription and no credit pools.